In the spring of 2012, three historically important documents of relevance to the art world saw the light of day. In May, the first ever report to the Storting devoted to the visual arts was put forward, at around the same time as the first government bill concerning Arts Council Norway was issued for consideration. The same month also saw the publication of the report by the Grund Committee, En kunnskapsbasert kulturpolitikk (A Knowledge-Based Cultural Policy), which will form the basis for a research strategy for the cultural field. As a backdrop to all this, the research project "Kunst! Makt! Seleksjon og forhandling i norsk kunstliv" (Art! Power! Selection and negotiation in the Norwegian arts sector) is working to analyse power relationships within the field. The project is expected to publish its conclusions in late 2013.

Government interest in the arts field intensified following the launch in 2006 of the Red-Green coalition government's "Cultural Initiative", a set of priorities for Norwegian cultural policy. These objectives should be met by 2014, with 1% of the national budget going to arts and culture. The Anne Enger Committee is now working on the report "Culture 2014", which will lay the foundation for the third and final phase of the Cultural Initiative.

This initiative demonstrates an emphatic government commitment to the arts and a willingness to bring about change. At Arts Council Norway's annual conference in 2011, the then minister of culture Anniken Huitfeldt said she would continue this reform process even though it was encountering more resistance than reforms in other areas tend to do.

Huitfeldt's favourite cultural-policy mantra is the importance of reaching out to new audiences, and one of the main goals of the Cultural Initiative is to make art and culture accessible to more people. In the report to the Storting on culture, inclusivity and participation that was debated by the Storting in May 2012, the government favoured closer dialogue with the institutions concerning administration. Official mandates from the Culture Ministry have become increasingly specific in the constraints they impose on the institutions. Culture is a tool for encouraging social inclusivity and diversity, objectives that are perceived as more important than the autonomy of art as such and of the institutions that serve the sector. As Huitfeldt said to the Storting: "I believe this goes to the very heart of what cultural institutions are there to do, namely to help provide opportunities for the entire community."

Is Arts Council Norway subject to similar cultural policy constraints? In the main article of this year's Norwegian Art Yearbook, "Arts Council Norway 2012: Between public administrator and political agent", Kristian Meisingset scrutinises Arts Council Norway and its adherence to the so-called arm's-length principle. Ever since the institution was founded in 1964, this principle has been central to the way the Arts Council manages its activities. The new bill concerning Arts Council Norway, which aims to clarify the division of responsibilities and roles between the Ministry of Culture and the Arts Council, places particular emphasis on the arm's-length principle. Meisingset believes this emphasis and the decision to enshrine the principle in law are likely to remain inconsequential, since the principle itself is unclear. Key figures in the arts field, both inside and outside the Arts Council, interpret the principle in very different ways.

In addition, Meisingset discusses the Arts Council's research, reporting and evaluation work, and the fact that in practice the institution is virtually the only commissioner of relevant research. Meisingset thinks there is a serious lack of cultural research in Norway, a view that is also echoed in the Grund Committee report.

This year's edition of the Norwegian Art Yearbook is the second in a series in which we take a closer look at autonomy and instrumentalism in the arts field. In the main article of last year's edition, which focused on Public Art Norway (KORO), we examined the ongoing changes to the former National Foundation for Art in Public Buildings. KORO's high-profile scheme to provide art for outdoor spaces (URO) exemplifies a progressive conception of art inspired by socially critical trends and relational aesthetics. When a government institution such as KORO takes a specific conception of art as basis for its work, there is a real danger that it will become selective according to instrumental criteria. That article also made it clear that, in relation to art, instrumentalism and autonomy are ambiguous concepts. Similar problems are highlighted in this year's review of Arts Council Norway.

In the spring of 2012, the first green shoots of major new art initiative in Oslo entitled Slow Space began to appear. As a first step in a four-year art project based on slowness and ecology, hundreds of garden plots were planted with various primitive varieties of grain. In a critical assessment of this privately funded project, which is planned to run until 2016, Beate Petersen explores the vision and the ideas behind the undertaking.

In this year's Yearbook we also take a closer look at what life is like for artists these days. The Yearbook presents interviews with Maia Urstad, Leander Djønne, Ane Mette Hol and Svein Flygari Johansen, in which these artists talk about working conditions, networking, and colleagues, and their experience of working with art institutions and curators in Norway and abroad.

In another interview, Johanne Nordby Wernø asks the artists Kristian Øverland Dahl, Steinar Haga Kristensen and Sverre Gullesen of the group D.O.R. about the difficulties of operating as artists who present a unified front to the outside world. The discussion eventually ends up influencing the format of the actual interview.

The book presents six new reviews of art exhibitions that opened in the title year. We invited the critics Ingvild Krogvig, Kjetil Røed, Synnøve Vik, Stian Gabrielsen and Power Ekroth to write about an exhibition of their choice from 2011.

Kjetil Røed and Synnøve Vik revisit two exhibitions that illuminated issues relating to archives and museums from different angles. Røed's theme is Kirstine Roepstorff's "Wunderkammer of Formlessness" at the Museum of Contemporary Art, while Synnøve Vik turns her attention to "Thing Tang Trash" at Bergen Art Museum. Stian Gabrielsen has written about Fredrik Værslev's exhibition "I'm gonna keep a happy thought and assume this is just a negotiation tactic" at Standard (Oslo), Ingvild Krogvig about the Per Inge Bjørlo retrospective at Henie Onstad Art Centre, and Power Ekroth about Øystein Aasan's exhibition at the gallery PSM in Berlin and his contribution to the Momentum Biennial in 2011.

The tragic events of 22 July will remain an indelible part of our memories of 2011. We have chosen to commemorate what happened on that day by featuring Jan Christensen's site-specific work En melankoli (A Melancholy) at Oslo Central Station on the cover.